Friday, November 28, 2014

Library Business: Linda Johnson BPL Links

More from the non-librarian President & CEO of the Brooklyn Public Library:BPL's Bklyn Bookmatch - A Match for the Human Race's Book Future?: Electronic Books and Robot Librarians (Noticing New York):

"At the BPL’s September 16, 2014 trustees meeting, Ms. Johnson and her staff proudly unveiled a way to replace on-site reference librarians with an electronic service substitute, a sort of virtual reference librarian system that can respond to a patron's inquiry, and by virtue of calculating "appeal factors"(BPL’s terminology to describe the service) will tell e-mailers what books they want to read with a week's turnaround time.Here is a quote from the presentation given the trustees:You don't usually get this chance to have such a conversation with someone at the reference library desk.Of course, as you are not face to face with a live person this won't be exactly such a chance either, but it goes along with how we shrink libraries for real estate deals." Drive the Branches? You Can Now Rent a Zipcar at the Park Slope Library(South Slope News)"Since last Friday, Brooklyn Public Library branches — Park Slope, Bedford, and Bay Ridge — have six Zipcars parked nearby (in spots they say were previously unavailable for public use) and available to rent. Not only are the cars named after “famous literary figures” according to a release, but if you’re a book-lover with a library card, youcan get a discount on the car sharing company’s annual fee as well as a $25 driving credit."...“Borrow it when you need it, return it when you’re done — it’s a cycle of sharing that is the foundation of both Brooklyn Public Library and Zipcar,” said Linda E. Johnson, president and CEO of Brooklyn Public Library, in a statement.